July 27, 2010

Duh: Wiki Leaks Founder Anti-War Nut, Not Journalist

Mr. Assange says he is a journalist, but he is not. He is an activist, and to what end it is not clear. This week — as when he released a video in April showing American helicopter gunships killing Iraqi civilians in 2007 — he has been throwing around the term “war crimes,” but offers no context for the events he is judging. It seems that the death of any civilian in war, an unavoidable occurrence, is a “crime.”

If his desire is to promote peace, Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines. By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place.

Remember, Assange called it "murder" when a helicopter engaged what were clearly enemy combatants carrying weapons. He himself later admitted that he had seen the weapons, but chose not to mention that fact in the dozens of interviews and press releases that surrounded the video showing the alleged "war crimes" until after he had been called out by us and the fact that weapons were unmistakably and clearly seen finally made it back to the MSM.

Which makes the so-called "journalist" either a combatant himself as he was showing Mahdi militia men pictures of a US military convoy when he was killed. Worst case scenario, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad things happen in war.

As for the van, see above and remember that part of the context Assange doesn't want you to know about is that the van had dropped off the combatants before the engagement. The lesson here is that you don't bring your kids to a firefight. It's sad, but the blame lies clearly with the insurgents.

But even after those facts had been established Assange continued to call for an investigation and claiming that there was a cover up of the incident despite knowing full well that the military had investigated it twice already and cleared the soldiers involved.

Which makes him more than a paranoid anti-war activist with an agenda, it also makes him a liar.